My new adventure and experience with AIESEC

After the Eid vacation our exams started so it was even harder to find a time for us to meet with Anni, but she declared a time for this weeks meeting, which is/was suppose to be about the AIESEC brand but it turned out to be at the same time of one of my exams, so with a bit of coordination I was able to go to another group’s meeting, held by Asier, which turned out to be interesting, it was different from anni’s meetings but not in a bad way, I can’t say it was better or worse then hers but simply different, they each got their own method which seems to work perfectly, but perhaps they could meet up and talk about it, so each could better his or her way, any way back to the brand of AIESEC, Asier first explained the meaning of brand in general in a very nice way, personally I think he might have spent to much time on this part but I am sure he knew what he was doing, well I don’t think I should mention all the details about the meeting but to summon what I got from it, the AIESEC brand is an important part in the marketing activities in the organization, I would simply describe it as the banner or flag the AIESECs hold up high when entering each and every battle, its also the organizations united signature.

Well well , here we are after the Eid vacation, I hope you all had a lovely time, and didn’t worry too much about the mid-term exams that started right after the vacation,

To the important stuff… ME and MY vacation, !!! well I had a great time, I spent it with my friends that I haven’t seen in a long time, we had one devastating problem after an other, but we had so much fun solving them together that I don’t care that I wasted my money on stupid stuff and spent a day in the hospital vomiting blood,

Any way, the good vacation, which I thought was going to end terrible, ended with a NICE surprise, I was checking my email and found an invitation for an Halloween party to welcome our first two AIESEC Interns here in Jordan, so on a very SHORT notice I tried to find a costume, which apparently was harder then I thought, but thanks to two friends at the university I had a costume to wear for the party (so a thousand thanks to my best friends “you know who you are”), any way, it turned out that the place of the party was changed and I had already left before they sent the email about the changing but luckily a friend hacked my email that day and she was smart enough to find out that I had no idea about the new place, so she called me INTERNATIONALY to inform me ( thanks Maria, I owe you one).

And to the party I went, not the best party I have attended, I didn’t get out of it with all the benefits I wanted, but I am not complaining, I might have wanted to do a bit more mingling myself, but unfortunately I had to spend my time making other people mingle (they really didn’t look like the party kind of people, perhaps I should start giving lessons, at least that way I’ll have a chance to enjoy the party more myself)

Long story short it was nice party, a lot of different people, and I had people actually try my eid kaa’k and ma’mool, (I hope they liked it)

ok here is what we handed out to students to answer, there are a few mistakes but you’ll what we mean by each question

Dear fellow student,

We are a group of students from different faculties here at the Jordan University, and we are recently started a new project to measure the level of understanding students have of the concept of corporate social responsibility, with the help of AIESEC expansion here in Jordan, and we would appreciate if you would give us a few moments of your time to fill this questioner.

Your few moments would mean a lot to us, and hopefully help us start making a useful good change in the WORLD.

Gender: MaleFemale

Major:____________________

Faculty:___________________

Year of study:__________________

Age:_________

Q1: Do you have any knowledge about corporate social responsibility?

Yes No

If yes please define: _____________________

Q2: Do you think that companies should be obligated to help in society issues?

Yes No

Q3: What are the problems you think companies in
Jordan should help solving?

____________________________________

____________________________________

Q4: Which sector should decide what companies should be socially involved in?

Public, government, company employees, company’s management, others

Q5: DO you think companies that are participating in social issues are doing so to cover their unethical activities?

Yes No

Q6: Do you know any companies that are participating in developing the society?

Yes No

Q7: Do you think companies can benefit from helping the society?

YesNo

Q8: Do you think that people and non-profitable-organizations are able to affect companies to adopt corporate social responsibility in
Jordan

YesNo

Q9: Do believe that the topic of corporate social responsibility should be included in university courses?

YesNo

Q10: How do you classify
Jordan in the field of corporate social responsibility?

OK ppl, we got to a point where projects has started to take a form, now since my last post we had had one meeting in the Chess-court at the Jordan university to talk about the questions, Annika stopped by and gave us some useful advices, which we took to consideration, we rephrased the questions so that the students might answer even of they got ZERO knowledge about CSR, I’ll make a special post listing the final form of the questioner, any way, I went home after that, made “Eftar” then started typing the questions, I saved it to my flash memory and the next day before our official meeting with Annika in the UN leadership institute I went to a computer lab at university and printed out a copy for each team member, then I went to the meeting and found Karam, who pointed out several spelling mistakes and grammatical ones, which reminds me I REALLY should start improving my English because it turned out its much WORSE then I expected, any way the questions could be understood even with the mistakes, so we agreed that each one should get 15 copies filled ASAP, so we can start making the conclusions and results.

so now I am waiting for everyone to hand it their part of th work so we can decide what methodes we will use to make our full detailed report

First of all HAPPY EID, I know it has been too long since I updated this blog but honestly I have been TOTALY BUSY these past weeks, ok let me fill you in on what happened we have had 2 meetings since last update (I think…its hard to keep track of all the stuff that is happening in my life these days), so lets see what happened in those 2 meetings:

the first: I really enjoyed this one, Annika was again gave “active learning” a new definition, her creative ways of getting things across are interesting and funny, and the meetings are getting less and less “lecture-like”, if my memory is serving me right that meeting was about the AIESEC organization, it’s princibles, laws, goals etc etc etc.

Annika was explaining the concept of AIESEC being a “platform” and she jumped up on the table infront of us to give us the idea of what a platform is, and how different things are parts of a platform and how.

oh and we were informed about AIESEC internal organization system, personaly I find it to be a bit too “uncentral” but if it has worked for about 60 yearsm it must have some kind of element Annika didn’t explain in details that made it work, so I’ll check the AIESEC blogs and web-sites to get a better idea,

the 2’nd meeting was very interesting but at the same time a bit more boreing then the other ones, it was about the exchange system AIESEC follows, as I said it was very interesting and full of usefull information, but it I think its a bit to early to get into the exchange thing, I know its an important part of the AIESEC experience, but for me it was a blow to be tought about it so early, perhaps I felt it to be a bit boreing its because of the “surprise” , but to be honest it had a few moments full of laught and fun.

now the two meeting had a lot of stuff that I would like to share with you, but I can’t put more then 15 minutes aside to update my blog and I still have to write a post about the project, so please forgive me,

well I’ll start keeping track of the things we are doing to finish the project and come up with good results so here we go…

Thursday 12th.October

I arrived earlier then agreed on at the chess-court, (better early then Late), about 15 minutes before the time Naila arrived then Mahmood, its important to me to mention that some team members where not able to come for different reasons, but each of them did send a msg with some of the other members informing and apologizing.

After every one arrived we looked for a place to sit down and start the meeting, there was a small problem in deciding the proper place, until Hana stricked us with the sense of adventure and simplicity (by the way I think Hana will be able to motivate the team in many ways that will be helpful) after sitting down and getting comfortable (not very comfortable) we started the meeting….

First we took a short look at what we understood about CSR “Corporate social responsibility” according to what we read and researched.

Next we started talking about the questioner, how we wanted it look like, and what elements we wanted to be in it, and ended with the following decision

the questioner will have the following features:

1) It will start the a simple definition of CSR, and perhaps a short introduction to the topic

2) The questions will have multiple choices as answers

3) It will concist of about 15 questions

4) Available in both Arabic and English

after that were decided we started with thinking about the questions and making a draft, I liked this phase for many reasons, some of them are; even that we were not 100% organized we were able to keep a level of order over the meeting, I got to know how many of the members think and analyze things, we might have kept getting out of track and talk about other stuff now and then but we always were able to get back to the main subject, and the way we came up with the questions were interesting first someone would come up with a perspective about CSR that we should ask about then we would start discussing if we should or not, then if we decided that we should we started thinking about questions, and a mind storm of ideas would be hit the meeting, then we would linguistically manipulate the question so that it would be clear, direct, and proper…

Ok some of the questions we came up with:

1) Did you have prior knowledge about corporate social responsibility

Yes, No

2)Do you think CSR should be obligatory or voluntary?

obli, voul

3)Do you think CSR is profitable on long-term bases?

Yes.No

4) DO you know any companies that are socially responsible here in Jordan?

Yes_______, No

5) In your opinion what are the priority for CSR in Jordan ( or what are the problems CSR in Jordan are most needed for?)

The answers are writen, analazing it is Karam’s responsibility

6) Do you think that people and NGOs are able to affect companies to adopt CSR in Jordan

Yes,No

7)Do you think that the topic of CSR should be included in university courses

Now those are our main draft for the moment, but we agreed that every one should do a bit more research about it, and come up with more questions for our next meeting, and that we should hurry up, because time is running by

well last week we had our 2’nd meeting with Annika, thats the third meetingwith AIESEC, till now this might have been the less fun meeting yet the most usefull.

The steps and benifits of AIESEC were explained, even if it was not in a very deep detailed way, it gave me a better idea of what it is, what I might benifit, and what I should put under concideration when I am planning what I want to do in the long run with my AIESEC experience.

Now about the atmosphere of the meeting, as I mentioned in the begining this was the less fun meetings till now, Annika did tell me that she read my blog and that she has distributed the link to some of her collegues, now what worries me about that, is that she might have read my advice about “cutting down on cafeine” and have taken it a bit too serious, she was less active then usuall and she might still have acted in a very friendly and nice way, but I couldn’t stop feeling that there was some newly frozen ice between her and us, and the sence of being in a lecture took over, on the other hand this might have happened because we have started the more importent and serious parts of the experience and might have nothing to do with my small unserious advice, (which I only wrote to add some fun in the post, and to help you “the reader” to imagine how things we in the first meeting)

Any way… the meeting was very usefull, it gave me some basic idea about where I might beheading with AIESEC, and it alos gave me some key elements to look for when I am searching about AIESEC on the net.

oh just as a small note, I should have writen this post many days ago, but I became so busy I couldn’t update my blog for a few days , sorry for that!!!

well well well, today at about 2 pm I got a SMS from AIESEC saying that we got a meeting at 2:40 pm , to be honest I was a bit upset for the very short notice but I quickly got over it.

On my way to the UN building where the SMS said the meeting was suppose to be I met Mohamad (a guy from my group) and we agreed to call just to make sure about the meetings place, Annika, who answered was very helpful and told us it was in the same building the first meeting was at, so we went.

after getting there and a small chit chat with the others who had already arrived, Annika came in and informed us that she will be in charge of our group, we then sat in what was suppose to me a semi-circle and went through the names again, this time also mentioning a name of food that starts with the same letter, (I think to make remembering the names better, but for me I got more confused, any way after a few more activities (no need to mention details about that) Annika told us about our project, we are suppose to make what could be called a study about students’ awareness about corporation responsibility,.

The methodes we are suppose to use is very simple, the questionere way, I have done a few of those with the foreign studends’ office and it wasn’t so hard, as long as we stick togather, don’t get on each others’ nerves and keep to a time-line, we will be just fine.

I took every one’s name, number, and email address, and a few minutes ago typed them and send each a copy.

oooo one of the things I must mention was Karam’s idea of how to conntact each other, he made this comunication tree plan, so each will recieve any SMS by one member and send it to one member, so in the end the message will go in a full circle, that way no one will have to spend too much money and we’ll be sure the message got to every one.

In the end of the meeting they showed us a short documentary on corporation responsibility, mmm well it wasn’t as useful that I hoped, but it gave me some basic idea about the subject.

Ok I better end this post and start looking through the net about our projects subject so I won’t look like an idiot when we meet again.

On our first meeting we were asked to arrange a time for the whole group to meet, and after a lot of efford my group came up with 2 temporary times for this week, the first was suppose to be today between 2:30 and 4:30, but I didn’t get any e-mails about any meeting, so I guess things got a bit messed up with the AIESEC people, well thats expected when they are handling as many people as we are are, and they are all alone, I wouldn’t mind offereing them some help (if you read this and need help just ask, I’ll be happy to try my best) an other thing I did at the first introductiory meeting was that I took the emails of my team so I could send them an email asking them about their free times so I can arrange a better schecual for us, I only got 3 replies till now, and worse then that is that I made a small mistake in the time-table I sent them , I forgot to add the 12:00 to 13:00 lecture, so I have to resend and ask them to rereply, (they are going to hate me) , but on the first look at the replies I had it seems that makeing a time that fits all will be very HARD if not impossabile, but we’ll try our BEST.

I might pass by the deanship today to see if I can find any of the AIESEC supervisors and see whats going on, I guess we have to be patient if we won’t to get the best out of this experience.

Take care all, and remember if you can’t handle the heat, don’t tickle the dragon